Penguin now offer a new service to determine your main 'energy thieves' and identify possible money-saving solutions. For a period of 1-7 days a monitor is connected to your mains supply, with similar devices connected to appliances likely to be high energy consumers, e.g. radiators, boilers, water pumps etc. A graph is then produced to show the pattern and amount of power consumption.

A recent example: a luxury 5-bedroom residence with high energy bills for just 3 permanent occupants. Monitoring revealed that, even discounting the heating/cooling systems, around 60kW was being consumed every 24hrs, with approx. 50% occurring overnight. This was sourced to the pumps in the technical room, which were consuming approx 25kW – equivalent to around €130 per month or €1500 per year. The solution was to install a more energy-efficient, variable-speed pool pump which can save up to 90% in running costs.

It's likely that many properties can benefit from such monitoring. Penguin's service is inexpensive and may well identify the energy-thieves on your electricity bill!